If two scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory are correct, people will still be driving gasoline powered cars 50 years from now, giving out heat-trapping carbon dioxide(二氧化碳) into the atmosphere—and yet that carbon dioxide will not contribute to global warming.

    In a proposal by two scientists, vehicle emissions(排放) would no longer contribute to global warming. The scientists, F. Jeffrey Martin and William L. Kubic Jr., are proposing a concept, which they have named Green Freedom, for removing carbon dioxide from the air and turning it back into gasoline.

The idea is simple. Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be put to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel(燃料): gasoline or jet fuel.

    This process could change carbon dioxide from an unwanted, climate-changing pollutant into a vast resource for renewable fuels. The cycle—equal amounts of carbon dioxide produced and removed—would mean that cars, trucks and airplanes using the synthetic(合成的) fuels would no longer be contributing to global warming.

    Although they have not yet built a synthetic fuel factory, or even a small model, the scientists say it is all based on existing technology. “Everything in the concept has been built, is operating or has a close cousin that is operating.” Dr. Martin said.

    The Los Alamos proposal does not go against any laws of physics, and other scientists who have independently suggested similar ideas. Dr. Martin said he and Dr. Kubic had worked out their concept in more detail than former proposals.

    There is, however, a major fact that explains why no one has built a carbon-dioxide-to-gasoline factory: it requires a great deal of energy.

    According to their analysis, their concept, which would cost about $5 billion to build, could produce gasoline at an operating cost of $1.40 a gallon and would turn economically practical when the price at the pump hits $4.60 a gallon.

    Other scientists said the Los Alamos proposal perhaps looked promising but could not evaluate it fully because the details had not been published. “It's definitely worth pursuing,” said Martin I. Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. “It's not that new an idea. It has a couple of pieces to it that are interesting.”

"Dad," I say one day …..take a trip. Why don't you fly and meet me?"

    My father had just reired……….. His job filled his day, his thought, his life. While he woke up and took a warm shower, I screamed under a freezing waterfall Peru. While he tied a tie and put on the same Swiss watch, I rowed a boat across Lake of the Ozarks.

    My father sees me drfting aimlessly, nothing to show for my 33 years but a passport full of funny stamps. He wants me to settle down, but now I want him to find an adventure.

    He agrees to travel with me through the national parks. We meet four weeks later in Rapid City.

" What is our first stop?" asks my father.

"What time is it?"

"Still don't have a watch?"

    Less than an hour away is Mount Rushmore. As he stares up at the four Presidents carved in granite(), his mouth and eyes open slowly, like those of little boy.

"Unbelievable," he says, "How was this done?"

    A film in the information center shows sculptor Gutzon Borglum devoted 14 years to the sculpture and then left the final touches to his son.

We stare up and I ask myself, Would I ever devote my life to anything?

No directions, …… I always used to hear those words in my father's voice. Now I hear them in my own.

    The next day we're at Yellowstone National Park, where we have a picnic.

"Did you ever travel with your dad? I ask.

"Only once," he says. " I never spoke much with my father. We loved each other—but never said it. Whatever he could give me, he gave.">

    The kast sebtebce—it's probably the same thing I's say about my father. And what I'd want my child to say about me.

In Glacier National Park, my father says, "I've never seen water so blue." I have, in several places of the world, I can keep traveling, I realize—— and maybe a regular job won't be as dull as I feared.

    Weeks after our trip, I call my father.

"The photos from the trip are wonderful," he says." We have got to take another trip like that sometime.

    I tell him I've learn decided to settle down, and I'm wearing a watch.

    For more and more young Chinese professionals, the first day back at work after the Lunar New Year holiday is the day they quit.

   The period after the Lunar New Year holiday, also known as Spring Festival, often sees Chinese workers on the move. This year, the number looking for new opportunities is supposed to be especially high.

    Mr. Zhu, a 27-year-old Beijing native, is one of the young workers looking for a better deal. “Salary is a big concern for me and I need a job that pays more, and my department can't provide good career development for me,” he said.

    An online survey by Zhaopin.com, a leading job-hunting website, provides further details on why China's young white-collar workers are so keen to move on.

    Low salaries are the biggest concern for 62% of the job-hunters, and overtime and a wide mismatch between low salaries and high housing costs are also the complaints. Two-thirds of them said they had to work at home after office hours, and a full 95% said they felt they were under heavy pressure because of the housing payment or rent.

    The survey also found that what was seen as a “good job” has changed. For the generation born in the 1970s, high salary and status is the key. For the generation born after 1980, work-life balance and respect in the office are also important.

    Zhao Bin, a 28-year-old woman who earns over 7,000 yuan a month working at a public relations company in Shanghai, said she would wait until the Lunar New Year to change her job. “My salary is OK for me, but I am working like crazy. So I want to find something comfortable, like being an English teacher in training schools.”

    What time of day can you think most quickly? Are you a morning person? Or does it take you a few hours to get your brain going? A lot of recent research suggests that we should pay attention to our body clock. It can tell us what time of day we can perform best at.

    Many people work best later in the morning. This is because the body's temperature takes time to rise through the day. Taking a warm shower when you wake up can help your body's temperature rise quickly.

    But everyone's body clock is different and some are special. Morning people will get up early and work better early in the day. Evening people will work later but work better towards the end of the day.

    Research shows that we're better at some activities at certain times of the day. Physical performance（体能）is at its best between 3 pm and 6 pm, so it's better to exercise later in the day. Between noon and 4 pm, people begin to pay less attention. This is because we think less quickly after a big meal. Research also shows we become sleepy around 2 pm. This is why people in Spain take a short sleep in early afternoon. Finally, it is best to eat when we're active. This allows our body to burn calories（卡路里）better and stops our blood sugar levels（血糖）from getting too high.

    While elephants born without tusks (长牙)are not unheard of，they normally form just 2 to 6 percent of the population. However, that is not the case at Mozambique's Gorongosa National Park, where an astonishing 33 percent of female elephants born after the country's civil war ended in 1992 are tuskless. While that may appear to be just a coincidence, Joyce Poole, an elephant behavior expert, has another theory. The researcher thinks we may be witnessing unnatural evolution of the species due to the constant hunting of elephants for valuable ivory.

    Poole says before the country's 15-year-long civil war, the 100,000—acre park was home to over 4,000 elephants. However, by the time the conflict ended in 1992, about 90 percent of them had been killed for ivory to help finance weapons (武器)and meat to feed the soldiers. Of the less than 200 survivors, over 50 percent of adult females had no tusks. Therefore, it is not surprising that the park's tuskless elephant population has grown greatly.

    This is not the first time researchers have observed a great change in the population of elephants. At Zambia's South Luangwa National Park and Lupande Game Management Area ， areas which were heavily hunted in the 1970s and 1980s, 35% of elephants 25 years or older and 13% of those younger than 25 are now without tusks. A 2008 study published in the African Journal of Ecology found that the numter of tuskless females at the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania went from 10.5 percent in 1969 to almost 40 percent in 1989, largely due to illegal hunting for ivory.

    The recent ban on ivory in both the US and China should help get rid of, or at least reduce, elephant hunting. However, scientists are not sure how long it will take for elephants with a higher rate of tuskless females, to change the trend.

    In 2011, the old style Malta buses were taken off the road and replaced by modern vehicles. Most of the old buses were deserted, a few were sold, and about 100 of them were put into storage in the hope of showing them in a museum at some stage.

    A pre-2011 visit to Malta wouldn't have been complete without a ride on one of the colorful buses. Until 1973 you could tell the destination of the bus just by looking at its color — Sliema was green and white, Zabbar was red and white with a blue stripe(条纹)etc. . Later, the buses all had numbers. For a while, they were all painted green and white before the ‘final' orange, yellow and white.

    In their prime, walking around the Triton fountain at the Valletta bus station, you would have found it very difficult to see two buses of exactly the same design. Most of them had locally built bodies. On the front of the buses carried names like Dodge, Leyland, Bedford etc. You were equally likely to find football pennants(锦旗)and the like decorating the cabs. Real bus experts would have recognized that these were there mainly for decorative reasons, and were seldom an accurate reflection of the vehicle's origins.

    Nowadays much more modern buses are to be found at the Floriana bus station. They are more environmentally friendly and possibly even more comfortable than the older types. However, I miss the old buses. I remember, when you boarded your bus, you had to prepare the correct change to pay the usually bad-tempered driver as you got on. If you were seated anywhere near the front, you would have noticed that most drivers sat well to the right of their steering wheel. The reason for this, as any Maltese would tell you, was to leave space for their pet to sit alongside them. I wonder where the pet sits these days.